Baltimore, MD, October 30, 2014. Hundreds of leaders of BUILD (Baltimoreans United In Leadership Development) from over 30 congregations and schools will rally Monday night and help get out the vote Monday and Tuesday. The organization is hitting the streets to demand attention for Baltimore from the future governor and to prepare for extensive electoral work around the 2016 elections.

Want to join in? Call the BUILD office at 401-528-0305

Want to cover this event? Great! Scroll down for a press summary and contacts.

BUILD leaders are concerned that the gubernatorial candidates have paid the city little attention throughout their campaigns. The future governor will have a prominent role in issues important to Baltimore and BUILD, such as education funding, 21st century school construction, and statewide strategies to increase employment. BUILD’s response? “BUILD is going door to door, house to house, neighborhood to neighborhood to show that Baltimore votes. Baltimore counts,” says St. Matthew’s member and BUILD leader Carol Augustine.

“Politicians listen to people that vote – especially groups of people that vote,” says the Rev. Andrew Foster Conners, BUILD Clergy Co-Chair, and Pastor of Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church. ”BUILD has seen this consistently.” The 37-year old organization has won its largest victories by engaging thousands of voters and gaining commitments from candidates. These victories include 1,200 affordable homes, the first living wage in the country, College Bound Foundation, the Child First Authority, and $1 billion for the construction of 21st century city schools.

Next week’s actions are a warm-up for a bigger effort. “Our campaign for the 2016 elections starts now,” says the Rev. Glenna Huber, BUILD Clergy Co-Chair. “We are sending a message to every candidate running for mayor, city council, and state-wide office. BUILD will be a leading force in voter engagement citywide, promoting a strong, resident-driven agenda.”

Monday November 3rd at 6pm, over 200 volunteers will gather for interfaith inspiration and training, and then disperse to surrounding Northeast Baltimore precincts. They will remind people to vote and arrange for rides the following day if necessary. Tuesday November 4th, 150 volunteers will door knock, phone bank, and drive voters to the polls.

Summary:

What: Election Eve Rally, followed by Get Out The Vote door to door canvassing Mon. Nov. 3 and Tues. Nov. 4

Who: Hundreds of BUILD leaders from 30+ congregations and school communities throughout Baltimore

How long does it take to get a park maintenance schedule from Baltimore’s Department of Recreation and Parks?

This is not a trick question.

If you are Terrell Williams, an organizer with Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD), and the park is Ambrose Kennedy in east Baltimore, apparently, the answer is one year and counting.

Read more about the Baltimore Sun’s coverage of BUILD’s recent efforts to get Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to come to the table on a jobs strategy for Oliver and Baltimore: “Mayor says she won’t fund…”

PRESS STATEMENT

DON’T ARREST ME, HIRE ME:

Baltimore’s residents are crying out for living wage work. Over the last three months, BUILD leaders from over 40 congregations and schools across Baltimore City conducted a massive listening campaign to ask more than 5,240 Baltimoreans about the top challenges facing their families. The number one response was jobs.

BUILD has a proposal that would put Baltimoreans to work immediately. Since July of 2013, BUILD leaders had been working with the Mayor’s office to develop a proposal to put 50 residents of the Oliver community to work in a pilot transitional jobs program that could be replicated across the city. BUILD has committed $1.2 million dollars to fund the majority of the program, and asked the Mayor to invest $594,000 over three years to get the program fully funded. BUILD has been waiting for over five weeks for the Mayor to respond with a date to meet about this proposal. “She can’t find $200,000 to invest in unemployed Baltimoreans that would come back to the City in income taxes? That’s sad,” says Mr. Melvin Wilson, leader on BUILD Citywide Jobs Team. “It’s a public-private partnership designed by the neighborhood that pays for itself. What more does she want than people taking responsibility for their own neighborhood?”

On April 8th, BUILD leaders will gather with our unemployed brothers and sisters seeking work to demand a meeting from Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on the number one issue for Baltimore’s citizens. “We are angry with this Mayor. We are tired of what this Mayor is not doing,” says Rev. Marshall Prentice, Pastor of Oliver-based Zion Baptist Church. “So we will do what we have to do until we get a response. If she doesn’t like our plan, then what’s her plan? We’ve got to get Baltimore working and we want a meeting about it.”

No Way Forward Without Jobs

Local pastors and residents see the consequences of unemployment in Oliver – and other communities in Baltimore – everyday: crime, drug dealing, and violence. “I was recently incarcerated, and I saw people come back into prison because they couldn’t support themselves when they got out,” says Dominic Rabey, a member of Oliver-based Zion Baptist Church who is working with BUILD to make this jobs program work. “I need a job, bad. I have to work.”

Rev. Calvin Keene, pastor of Memorial Baptist Church in Oliver who has fought with BUILD to redevelop the community for years, agrees: “If you try to separate public safety from jobs, you’re going to fail. All these programs they’re looking at now are the same things we’ve done before, just with a different name. It’s time to do the hard work of looking at the big issue: jobs.”

Baltimore incarcerates the largest percentage of residents of any major American city. It costs $36,500 to imprison someone at the Baltimore City Detention Center. Through BUILD’s proposal, the City could help adults enter sustainable career paths for $11,887 per trainee. Wages paid to trainees would reinforce the local economy.

A Proposal Rooted in A Record of Success

The proposed program is based on years of successful “development unusual” by BUILD in East Baltimore. For more than a decade, BUILD has worked with The Reinvestment Fund to redevelop the Oliver neighborhood, attracting over $40 million dollars of public housing funds, decreasing the abandonment rate by 67% and raising the median income by 54%. 82% of workers employed in Oliver by TRF are Baltimore residents, and 55% are African Americans.

BUILD’s jobs proposal is different from other employment programs because it is tied to an actual job. The pilot program would serve 50 adults from Oliver and local neighborhoods over 3 years. After a brief orientation, participants would get trained on job sites, receiving tools, uniforms, a living wage paycheck at $10.69 an hour and a variety of social supports to help workers succeed. The one-year training program leads directly to apprenticeships with the International Painter’s Union. BUILD has already lined up $1.2 million to fund the almost $1.8 million program.

“BUILD’s program is real and it works,” says Tyesha Tucker of Zion Baptist Church, a leader on the BUILD Jobs Team. “It starts with a job at the beginning of the day, and at the end of the day are the supports and services to maintain that job.” By offering a living wage, this program will provide a strong alternative to the underground economy. BUILD developed this program as a strategy to reduce crime in the area while continuing to rebuild the neighborhood.

One step in a Larger Campaign

In 1995, BUILD led the passage of the first “Living Wage” in the country, a model that has now been replicated around the world. BUILD is committed to a long-term focus on jobs to create again the kind of transformational change on the number one issue facing Baltimore.

This campaign for local employment is one step in an ongoing campaign to increase real- opportunity employment for Baltimore residents. Baltimore residents do not need development as usual, construction projects flush with public subsidies and tax dollars with weak minority and local hire rates. We need public officials aggressively pursuing large scale training programs connected to the real construction jobs coming to Baltimore.